1000 Dalasis Gambian puffback bird

The Gambia's 1987 gold issues were produced during the presidency of Dawda Jawara, whose government used high-denomination commemorative coinage partly as a foreign exchange mechanism — these pieces were never intended for domestic circulation and were sold almost exclusively to overseas collectors and bullion investors. The puffback series belongs to a broader wave of African wildlife commemoratives that flooded the collector market in the late 1980s, many struck under contract at foreign mints rather than any facility within the issuing nation.

Mintage figures for this type are poorly documented in primary sources, which is itself characteristic of Gambian issues from this period.